A view of the city

Featured in today's "Parade of Homes"

Community scale

 

These houses in an older Raleigh neighborhood are new.  They have been built at the same scale, more or less, as the other houses on the block. 

Their height is in keeping with the one- or one-and-a-half story height of other houses on the street. 

The horizontal emphasis of their bungalow style is in keeping with the ranch houses and bungalows on the street.

As far as possible the designers kept the large trees that shade the neighborhood and its sidewalks.

As a result of the designers' and buyers' respect for the surroundings, these houses are extremely desirable in and of themselves, as well as making the neighborhood even more desirable.  Everyone wins.

What lovely civic manners these houses have!  One would wish very much to make the acquaintance of their owners and builders. 

Cycle

Can you think of a place in Raleigh that exemplifies this cycle?

Typically, the gentrification process is linear and unfolds over time. First the artists seek out a neighborhood (usually an abandoned industrial zone or vibrant ethnic enclave) that’s cheap and relatively accessible. Then come the scenesters, who have more money but who still want an authentic urban lifestyle because, seriously, no one moves to the suburbs anymore. All they want is an affordable place on a non-eyesore-ish block within walking distance of a few cute restaurants, and a couple of good bars, and a halfway decent bookstore, and a yoga studio, and a wine store that isn’t just full of cheap swill for rummies, and maybe a children’s boutique with adorable $80 hand-sewn frocks hanging off a wooden tricycle in the window, and a Starbucks, and a Whole Foods. And they’re willing to bet that, if just a few of those things are in place already, the others will come along soon enough—so that eventually their new neighborhood will look pretty much identical to the ones they couldn’t previously afford. At which point the developers arrive to throw up new condo buildings named after the neighborhood, and the hipper chains start to sniff out a new lucrative demographic pocket—and the artists have long since moved on, along with a good chunk of the neighborhood’s previous residents. 

(from If You Lived Here, You’d Be Cool By Now, New York magazine, Dec. 11, 2006)